Fitness for Generations to Come

My love of health and fitness came later in life, I guess you could say like many others who found fitness, I am a convert to fitness.

As I reflect back on my life I often say, “I wish I would have known what I know now about nutrition, health, and weight lifting when I was younger. “I would have been so much farther ahead in my journey”.

As a single father of 4 boys and 1 girl, I feel a great responsibility to raise them the best I can and prepare them to take on the world that can be not so friendly at times. I want to teach them all I can to better prepare them to be successful. Teaching them things like: hard work, honesty, friendship, self worth, cleanliness, budgeting, loyalty, and of course how to live a happy healthy lifestyle. How better off will our children be if we instill healthy habits early on.

Looking at the world today this principle is needed more than ever. I had an experience this last week where this was very apparent to me. There is a water park not too far from my house that I purchased season passes. I took my oldest son and my niece to the park this last.

I would say without exaggeration that 99% of the people at the park, including the children were overweight. It was sad to me that so many people, especially young children are already setting themselves up for a lifetime of health problems.     In contrast this last week I also had a really wonderful experience. My oldest son Kael turned 12! We have often spoken about the day that he would start lifting weights with me and that day finally came this last week!

I was a little hesitant to take him as I was worried he wasn’t ready yet. That he would walk out of the gym and never want to go back. I was pleasantly surprised as the experience was far from that. My son was excited! He listened and picked up on his form right away. I decided to start with an arm workout. Halfway through the training session he asked me, “Dad are my arms any bigger?” I laughed and responded that is was going to take more time and energy then one workout. The next day we hit our second workout and he asked me on the way to the gym if he could compete someday. I said of course and I would love to help him do that. So we have 4 years until he can compete in the teenage class at the age of 16. I can’t wait!

Like anything else that is important, like anything else you want to instill in your children, you should start early so those habits are deeply rooted into there lives that they will practice those healthy habits for their lifetime and pass their knowledge on to the next generation. When this happens it becomes a cycle that will ensure happiness and longevity for many generations to come.

Below is a link to an article I wrote for bodybuilding.com with some more ideas of how to help implement healthy habits into a family dynamics and helping fight childhood obesity. http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/child-care-7-tips-to-fight-childhood-obesity.html